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California got into this pickle because in 2001, when the UIF had a $6.5 billion reserve, the Legislature and then-Gov. Gray Davis decided to boost benefits sharply – nearly doubling them, in fact – without raising payroll taxes to pay for them. The extra benefits reduced the fund balance, leaving it unable to cope with sharp increases in claims for benefits when recession hit the state six years later. It was irresponsible, akin to the big increases in public employee pensions that Davis and legislators also decreed without a plan to pay for them, which also has created a big debt.

Average federal, state and local taxes and fees for California customers reached a record 18%, meaning that the government’s slice of your wireless bill is now at least twice as high as the state sales tax imposed on most other goods and services. . . Even though smartphones have become necessities and a crucial component of the digital economy, they’re still taxed in large part as a luxury item. . . In 1898, the federal government imposed a 3% excise tax on telephone use to help cover a face-off with Spain over the future of Cuba. Phones were relatively scarce at the time, so the tax was intended to be a levy on wealthy Americans.

During this decade, however, a slow recovery from recession and a temporary hike in taxes approved by voters in 2012 have boosted general fund revenues from scarcely $80 billion when Jerry Brown began his second governorship in 2011 to an estimated $116 billion today.

With breathtaking abruptness, the British government has in recent months slashed its support for solar power and other renewable forms of energy, leaving a once-promising industry with grim prospects and throwing into doubt the country’s commitment to clean power. . . Britain on Wednesday became the first major economy to propose a phase-out of coal-fired power plants, saying it intends to do so by 2025. But the government’s plan relies heavily on a switch to gas rather than cleaner alternatives.

The state budget is better prepared for an economic downturn than it has been at any point in decades. In 2015–16, we project that the state’s “Big Three” General Fund revenues—principally the personal income tax—will exceed June 2015 budget assumptions by $3.6 billion, with most of that gain to be deposited into the Proposition 2 rainy day fund. In 2016–17, we project that revenues will exceed spending under current policies, resulting in even further improvement in the state’s fiscal situation. Assuming no new budget commitments are made, we estimate 2016–17 would end with reserves of $11.5 billion.

The minimum funding guarantee for K-12 schools and community colleges is expected to surge to $77.5 billion by the 2019-20 school year – marking a five-year cycle of increases that will total more than $14 billion, according to a forecast released Wednesday by the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst.

In 2012, the top 50 percent of all taxpayers (69.2 million filers) paid 97.2 percent of all income taxes while the bottom 50 percent paid the remaining 2.8 percent.

The state will end the current fiscal year in June with $3.5 billion more in revenue than lawmakers expected when they approved the budget for the current year last June. And the state would have reserves of $11.5 billion in June 2017, the end of the 2016-17 budget year, barring any new budget commitments.

For example, taxpayers currently pay amounts equivalent to 37% of state firefighters’ salaries to CalPERS to cover their future retirement checks. That payment is based on estimates that the fund’s investments will continue to earn 7.5% over the decades. But if the investments earn just 6.5%, required taxpayer payments for firefighters jump to an amount equal to 55% of their salaries, according to CalPERS documents.

The cuts to government services to pay CalPERS may have just begun. The pension fund has already warned cities that they are in the midst of a six-year span in which pension payments will rise 50%. The new plan will add even more to those costs.

Until the 1970s, when Jerry Brown first became California’s governor, state policy makers were unflinching in their mission to build infrastructure that would meet the demands of a rapidly growing state. Building great public works projects was a source of pride. It was costly, but viewed as a small price to pay to live in this verdant paradise.

Billions of dollars for schools will likely be at stake on the 2016 ballot as well as pivotal campaigns for state Legislature and a question about union pensions. Meanwhile, the Capitol is expecting a robust debate about how schools are evaluated and courts will hear two lawsuits challenging the teachers union.

It is important to remember that even in our global economy, states’ stiffest competition often comes from other states. The Department of Labor reports that most mass job relocations are from one U.S. state to another rather than to a foreign location.[1] Certainly job creation is rapid overseas, as previously underdeveloped nations enter the world economy without facing the third highest corporate tax rate in the world, as U.S. businesses do.[2] State lawmakers are right to be concerned about how their states rank in the global competition for jobs and capital, but they need to be more concerned with companies moving from Detroit, Michigan to Dayton, Ohio, than from Detroit to New Delhi. This means that state lawmakers must be aware of how their states’ business climates match up against their immediate neighbors and to other regional competitor states.

So far, these carbon auctions have yielded the state of California approximately $2.8 billion in revenue, said CARB spokesman David Clegern. Half of that money goes to utility companies to offset electricity costs, and the other half is spent on an array of programs intended to help clean California’s air.

According to the most recent available information, California’s K-12 education spending lags the nation by almost any measure.